Zora Neale Hurston Essay

Zora Neal Hurston was criticized by other African American writers for her use of dialect and folk speech. Richard Wright was one of her harshest critics and likened Hurston’s technique “to that of a minstrel show designed to appease a white audience” (www.pbs.org).Given the time frame, the Harlem Renaissance, it is understandable that Zora Neale Hurston may be criticized. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement which redefined how America, and the world, viewed African Americans, so her folk speech could be seen as perpetuating main stream society’s view of African Americans as ignorant and incapable of speaking in complete sentences. However, others, such as philosopher and critic Alain Locke, praised her. He considered Hurston’s “gift for poetic phrase and rare dialect, a welcome replacement for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes” (www.pbs.org).

It is strange that two of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance could ever disagree as much as or be as different as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Despite the fact that they are the same color and lived during the same time period, they do not have much else in common. On the one hand is Hurston, a female writer who indulges in black art and culture and creates subtle messages throughout her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. On the other hand is Wright, who is a male writer who demonstrates that whites do not like black people, nor will they ever except for when they are in the condition “…America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.” Hurston was also a less political writer than

After this incident, she received rejection after rejection. Near the end of her life, Zora Neale Hurston suffered from, “overweight, hypertension, poor diet, gallbladder trouble, ulcers, and various stomach ailments”(Carson 3). She had a stroke and according to Warren J. Carson, she “was placed in the Saint Lucie County welfare home, where, alone and penniless, she died on January 28, 1960”(3). She is now buried an in unmarked grave. Clearly, Hurston struggled in life, but through leaning on God and her faith, she pushed through the tough times. Hurston is now recognized as a distinguished author, and was able to overcome her hardships just like Delia.

In the short story “Drenched in Light” by Zora Neale Hurston, the author appeals to a broad audience by disguising ethnology and an underlying theme of gender, race, and oppression with an ambiguous tale of a young black girl and the appreciation she receives from white people. Often writing to a double audience, Hurston had a keen ability to appeal to white and black readers in a clever way. “[Hurston] knew her white folks well and performed her minstrel shows tongue in cheek” (Meisenhelder 2). Originally published in The Opportunity in 1924, “Drenched in Light” was Hurston’s first story to a national audience.

Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and

In the text, Zora gives background information about her childhood and family life growing up. The autobiography first took place in Eatonville, Florida, which was known as Zora’s hometown. Zora Neale Hurston was an African American, female who always had a mind of her own even at a young age. Zora was not the average child while growing up, she enjoyed trying new things and she spoke her mind which could label her as deviant to the outside world. Zora also showed early signs of deviance

Once her mother passed, she was “passed about like a bad penny.” Her father treated her like he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Her father told her that she’d be hung for sure, since she was filled with passion and imagination. She felt as though once her daddy remarried the bond that they had been broken. Zora and her step mother Mattie Moge never got along with each other. They always exchange words and sometimes it would get intense to the point of them fighting. A few years later poor Zora would get tired of what she was going through. Zora worked her way up to the top, and later enrolled in school with a false birth date. Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist

Setting her independence, Hurston at the age of 14 left her residence to work as a maid of a traveling Gilbert and Sullivan theatrical troupe. Given the opportunity Hurston was sent to Morgan Academy in Baltimore, Maryland by one of her employers. Finishing up her high school studies in Morgan Academy and graduating on June 1918, Hurston studied part-time at Howard University in the same year. While Hurston studied in college she decided to support herself as “a manicurist, a waitress, and a maid in order to support herself” (D. Kaplan 2). Hurston’s talent towards literature started to emerge while studying at Howard. She made such an impact in her first short story titled, “John Redding Goes to Sea" in 1921, that it was included in the university’s literary magazine named “Stylus”. Sociologist Charles S. Johnson, immediately caught the attention of such excellent work who also encouraged Hurston to move to New York City in the year of 1925 (Bomarito 89). Beside Johnson mentoring her to go to New York he also inspired her to enter the literary contest of his magazine entitled “Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life.”

“I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl” (Hurston, 1928). She finally got a taste of discrimination. In Barbara Johnson’s journal entitled, “Thresholds of Difference: Structures of Address in Zora Neale Hurston,” she mentions that there is a loss of identity. “The ‘I’ is no longer Zora, and ‘Zora’ becomes a ‘she’” (Johnson, 1985). In a way, there is a theme of adaptability. This move did not break her spirit. This is known because she says that, “I am not tragically colored” (Hurston, 1928). Zora makes it known that she is not ashamed to be colored. Though white people would make it a point to mention how blacks are progressing in times, she refuses to stay tied to the memory of slavery or feel disgraced because she is

One of Hurston’s stories, How it Feels to Be Colored Me, reflects the author’s perspective of the colored race (specifically herself). According to the story, when Hurston reached the age of thirteen, she truly “became colored” (1040). The protagonist was raised in Eatonville, Florida, which was mainly inhabited by the colored race. She noted no difference between herself and the white community except that they never lived in her hometown. Nevertheless, upon leaving Eatonville, the protagonist began losing her identity as “Zora,” instead, she was recognized as only being “a little colored girl” (1041). Hurston’s nickname “Zora” represents her individuality and significance; whereas, the name “a little colored girl” was created by a white society to belittle her race and gender (1041).

Hurston prides herself on who she is because of her background. Her identity of being a black woman in a world

Zora Neale Hurston was born and raised in Eatonville, Florida which was the first all-black town in the United States to be incorporated and self-governed. Due to Hurston growing up in an all-black community, she was protected from racism. She states that the only white people she knew were the ones passing through the town going to or coming from Orlando. When she moved from the town of Eatonville to Jacksonville, she was introduced to a different lifestyle where she was

Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American folklorist, novelist and anthropologist. She was born in 1891 and lived in the first all-black town in the United States, Eatonville, Florida. Her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God and played a vital role in the literacy movement the Harlem Renaissance is what she is best known for. Zora Neale Hurston depicts racism in her writings and has contributed greatly to African-American literature. Her work became more popular posthumously.

Some time passed, she turned up in Baltimore where she lied about her age to finish high school. After which she enrolled in Howard University in 1920 where earned an associate’s degree. She then transferred to Barnard College and after graduating in 1928, she started coursework for a PHD in Anthropology at Columbia University. Some years later, she moved to Harlem deep in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance, where she became a fixture in its thriving art scene along with friends, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen who she was known to be acquainted with. She wrote several short stories and plays, such as “Mules and Men”, “The Great Day”, “From Sun to Sun” and “Mule Bone”. She also a few novels, two highly regarded works of anthropology and an autobiography titled, “Dust Tracks on a Road”, which has had some controversy on whether some parts of her life’s story in truly accurate. One example would be that she claimed to have written “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, in seven weeks “under internal pressure” while on a Guggenheim fellowship to Haiti to study the folklore. Hurston struggled through the last years of her life, as she continued to write but

Although Zora Neale Hurston and Jamaica Kincaid lived in different times, thematically their writing had similar themes. If they had been contemporaries, they most certainly would have discussed their common experiences as black women who faced financial challenges and the racial divide that they experienced in their daily lives. Without a doubt, their writing was personally cathartic. Although in Kincaid’s writing, she addresses her issues with her mother head on, I have no doubt that Hurston’s stories were also influenced by her early family life.